


remedial breakfast in the modern marriage

by lgbtrobed



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Married Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:39:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lgbtrobed/pseuds/lgbtrobed
Summary: It's a special day, and Troy deserves a special breakfast.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 18
Kudos: 95





	remedial breakfast in the modern marriage

**Author's Note:**

> written for 12-horses-in-drag on tumblr, who requested some domestic married trobed content 💖

It starts as just an offhand comment while they’re climbing into bed.

“You know what tomorrow is?” Troy asks around a yawn, tucking his head over Abed’s shoulder and draping an arm around his stomach. They’re both exhausted, having pushed themselves far beyond their usual limit for the sake of staying up to defeat the final boss in the new  _ Kickpuncher _ game. No, it wasn’t “necessary,” for them to do so, but going to bed without winning would’ve felt like a failure on their part. Or maybe the failure on their part was investing so much of their time into the  _ Kickpuncher  _ franchise over the years, he’s not sure. At the moment, Abed’s about… 50% certain it was worth it.

At Troy’s question, though, he freezes up. Because… tomorrow. No, he doesn’t know what tomorrow is. Is it important? He’s usually good with remembering dates.

It’s not their wedding anniversary, that’s in December. It’s also not their dating anniversary, that’s in three days. Or the anniversary of Troy coming home from his trip—they’d celebrated that one just last week. It’s not anyone’s birthday either, or a national holiday, so he’s drawing a blank.

“...June 10th?” he asks in a small voice when he’s done racking his brain and still hasn’t come up with anything. 

“Mhm,” Troy hums. “It’s the one-year anniversary of me coming out to you.”

“Oh,” Abed widens his eyes, but then relaxes. He rolls his head back across the pillow so his nose brushes over Troy’s hairline. “It’s been a year already?”

Troy’s eyes are closed, but he flutters them open at the question. “You might remember it better as the anniversary of you locking the apartment door and ravishing me for three days before we actually talked about our feelings.”

Abed’s cheeks quickly warm up at that. “Right,” his mouth quirks into a bit of a smile. “That’s ringing a bell, now that you mention it.”

Troy smiles back at him with his eyes, which is one of Abed’s top five favorite facial expressions, and then leans in to lock their lips together in a tired but sweet kiss. 

“Thanks for loving me,” Troy says as he pulls back and rests his head back down on Abed’s shoulder. “Even when I was confused.”

Abed feels a surge of affection and hugs Troy even tighter to him.

“Easiest thing I’ve ever done,” he shrugs. 

Troy raises an eyebrow at him. “Really?”

“Well,” he sighs, rubbing gentle circles in between Troy’s shoulders as he considers it. “No, not really. Thinking I didn’t have a shot with you for all those years was actually pretty agonizing.” He glances down at his wedding ring, and  _ wow,  _ they really did go from mutual pining to boyfriends to married  _ real  _ quick, now that he thinks about it, and he really wouldn’t have it any other way. “But it all worked out, so. It’s the payoff that counts.”

The lovestruck puppy-dog look in Troy’s eyes pretty much confirms that tenfold. And as he falls asleep with Troy wrapped around him, as always, a seedling of an idea plants itself in his mind.

*

_ Okay,  _ he thinks the next morning, once he’s watered the seedling and let it sprout.  _ Should’ve thought this through a little more. _

The kitchen counter is a mess. This happens pretty much every time he tries to do something more advanced than boiling macaroni, so he doesn’t know why he thought this time would be any different. The power of love, maybe? Anyway, he was wrong.

Pancakes aren’t supposed to be hard, he’s pretty sure. All he had to do was multiply the recipe by seven, except the recipe had been in grams and all they have is cups, so he’d frazzled himself enough trying to do basic math when in hindsight, he could have just found a different recipe. Maybe he should’ve waited for his brain to wake up more. 

He has managed, though, to make seven little different colored bowls of batter: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Each should make one pancake, all exactly the same size, or else he’s just spent god knows how long putting a crick in his neck from painstakingly measuring them to equal amounts. It really doesn’t help that they don’t own seven of the same size bowls—or seven of the same size anything, he’s pretty sure. 

He shakes his head to himself a little bit. That’s in the past. All he has to do now is cook them perfectly. He is not allowed, by any means, to burn even one of them, lest he have to start this whole process over. Breakfast has never been so high stakes. 

He’s just about to turn on the stove when he’s startled by a loud meow.

“Shh, Natasha,” he whispers. He looks over at her as she slinks across the counter, leaving pawprints in the light dusting of flour that’s covering pretty much the entire surface. She stops just at the edge of the stove and sits down, wide green eyes blinking up at him slowly. 

He blinks slowly back, because somewhere in Britta’s extensive instructional email on cat ownership, he’d read something about slow blinking as a gesture of trust and affection, and it’s worked out pretty well for him so far. He lifts his hand up and she butts her head against it, purring softly when he moves to scratch behind one of her ears and smooth his other hand through her silky black fur. Then she strolls back across the counter and meows loudly again when she sits next to her food bowl. 

Abed sighs. 

“I’ll feed you soon, okay?” He tells her. “Let me finish making these for Troy first. It’s kind of a big day for him, you know.” 

She just stares at him. 

“Right, I guess you don’t actually know,” Abed says. He turns the stove on and drops a pat of butter into the pan, letting it melt and sizzle before picking up the bowl of red batter and pouring it in. It spreads just the right amount; so far so good. 

“Well,” he begins his explanation, “Today’s his one year coming-out anniversary. You probably don’t know what that means, either. It means it’s the anniversary of him telling me he’s gay. You might not understand why that’s important, but in the human world, a lot of people are jerks about sexuality and gender. And a lot of other stuff too, but… well, we’ll save that for another time.”

When enough bubbles seem to have formed in the batter, he takes a deep breath as he slides the spatula carefully underneath the pancake and flips it. It goes smoothly and the first side of the pancake is just the right shade of red. He exhales in relief.

“So, anyway,” he continues, “Troy thought he was straight for most of his life, because of heteronormativity and toxic masculinity.” He looks over at Natasha, still sitting expectantly at her food bowl. She twitches an ear. “I’m sure you can figure those words out with context clues. Anyway, I was in love with him for a really long time. Like, pretty much as soon as we met, I had a crush on him. And sometimes I wondered if he had feelings for me too, because a lot of times it felt like we were more than friends, but then he’d start dating a new girl or get defensive about being straight, and I was too scared to ask. I couldn’t risk losing my best friend, you know? But I also couldn’t stop loving him, and believe me, I tried. I’m sure you understand that. You love him, too.”

He slides the first pancake out of the pan, re-butters it, and pours the orange batter in next.

“Then he went on this around-the-world boat trip with LeVar Burton so he could earn this inheritance he was left by this guy Pierce who was technically our friend,” Abed says. Those words in that order don’t even feel strange anymore. “I’ll tell you more about him if we ever need to talk about racism. But basically, he left, and I pretty much thought I was gonna die. I was so scared he was gonna meet someone else or decide he’d outgrown me. Honestly, I didn’t even know if he was gonna come home. It was a very angsty year. He did come back, though, obviously. And when he did...”

He flips the orange pancake and then looks up, ready to continue his story when he notices Natasha isn’t by her food bowl anymore. He frowns and glances around the kitchen, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

“Fine,” he mumbles to himself as the orange pancake finishes cooking and he starts with the yellow. “Be that way. See how willing I am next time you want someone to watch the birds with you.”

Once he makes it through the yellow pancake without incident, he starts to relax a little, and the green, blue, and indigo pancakes go fairly smoothly. They’re stacked neatly on a plate and he’s just poured the violet batter into the pan when he hears the sound of socked feet padding into the room. 

He turns and sees Troy leaning against the far wall of the room, looking sleepy but sweet with Natasha cradled in his arms. 

“Morning,” Troy yawns, walking over to him. “What are you making? It smells nice.” Natasha squirms and leaps out of Troy’s hold just as he comes up behind Abed. He wraps his arms around him, standing on his tiptoes and tucking his chin over Abed’s shoulder so he can see. He’s still warm from being cocooned in bed and his stubble scratches lightly against his cheek and Abed decides right then that it’s the nicest feeling in the world. 

“Aw, baby,” Troy sighs as Abed flips the last pancake over. “Did you make me gay pancakes? You didn’t have to do that.”

“I think I kinda did have to,” Abed says, resting one of his hands on Troy’s arm and using his free hand to slide the final pancake onto the stack. “You coming out was so brave, and I’ve never really told you how much it meant to me. Not just because it meant you could love me back, but because you accepted yourself for who you are and that’s all I ever wanted for you. So,” he turns the stove off and then turns around in Troy’s arms, holding the plate of pancakes out to him, “happy Gay Day. I’m really proud of you.”

Troy’s eyes soften in that adoring way they do, and Abed meets him in the middle when he leans in for a kiss. 

“You’re lucky it’s too early for me to have the energy to cry,” Troy says. “Otherwise I’d be weeping because you’re so cute.”

Abed furrows his eyebrows and glances at the time on the microwave. “Oh, yeah. It’s not even 8,” he says. “I was expecting to have to wake you up with these in bed. Why’d you get up so early?”

“Oh,” Troy cracks a small smile. “Natasha came to get me. Probably because she was getting impatient about her breakfast.” He steps away and sets his plate of pancakes on the counter before picking up her bowl and the scoop for her cat food. “Usually she can’t wake me up, but she swished her tail across my face and it was wet. So I opened my eyes and she had this blue goop on her tail, which I guess was pancake batter. So I had to get up to wash it off my face anyway.” He pours the scoop of food into her bowl and sets it back down.

Abed looks over at her. She’s perched on the counter next to her bowl again and he notes that she does, in fact, have some light blue pancake batter on the tip of her tail.

“What was even the point,” he sighs to her, “of naming you after Black Widow if you can’t be stealthy?”

“Alright,” Troy says fondly, reaching out and grabbing Abed’s hand, “obviously you’ve had a long morning, so now you have to eat gay pancakes in bed with me. Come on.”

And Abed thinks, as he’s tugged along to the bedroom, this doesn’t even feel that much like an anniversary. The truth is, none of their anniversaries do, because he falls more in love with Troy every day. But still, when they’re cuddled together in bed, hearts content and stomachs full of rainbow pancakes, he knows he’ll call back to this moment and this feeling for a very long time to come.

“I love you, you know,” Troy sighs. His wedding ring is solid and reassuring against Abed’s cheek when he cups his face and kisses him. “In like, a super gay way.”

Abed nods and smiles as he kisses back, over and over and over. “I know,” he says. “I gay-love you too.”

And that’s something worth celebrating, for sure.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> as always, comments make my day ❤️
> 
> find me/talk to me on tumblr @[lgbtrobed](https://lgbtrobed.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [[reblog link](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/lgbtrobed/635142941747331072)]


End file.
